PV181 Laboratory of security
and applied cryptography
Digital certificates
Marek Sýs, Zdeněk Říha
| PV1811
Digital certificate
• used to prove ownership of the public key
• binds public key to identity (identity, email,… )
• Public key is signed by trusted third party
– Certification Authority (CA) or other party
• two models: centralized and decentralized
Certificates history
• Introduced in 1978 – Kohnfelder’s bachelor thesis
• X.509 – standard
- v.1 (1988) – not extendable
- v.2 – similar to v.1
- v.3 (1997) optional extension
- Other extend X.509
Others
- PGP, SPKI, etc.
Trust models
• Public key infrastructure (PKI)
– centralized – hierarchy of CA’s
– cert signed by party
– used in web browsers
– standard X.509
• Web of trust
– decentralized model
– signed by many parties
– used in PGP, GPG
– standard OpenPGP
PGP
• 1991 - Paul Zimmerman
• tool to en/decryption, sign data (files, emails,…)
• Algs: hash, asymmetric, symmetric, compression
• Confidentiality, authentization, integrity
• standardized as OpenPGP - RFC 4880
• PGP – commercial
– free alternative GPG
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OpenPGP encryption
• Authentication & integrity & non-repudiation
– hash of plaintext signed by Alice’s private key
• Confidentiality
1. Alice generates randomly symmetric key
2. Symmetric key is encrypted with Bob’s public key
• Alice sends:
– encrypted signed data
– encrypted session key
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PGP certificates
• Two formats:
– PGP cert
– X.509
• PGP cert:
– PGP version number
– Public key (+algorithm)
– Identity information
– Digital signature –
Validity period
– Preffered symmetric encryption
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PGP signing and trust
• Key distribution: server or sent with data
• signing: PGP party – verification of binding
– KEY-ID, KEYNAME, FINGERPRINT + identity
• Trust:
– user – set of certs signed by different entities
– 4 levels – unknown, non, marginal, full
– signed by myself or fully or 3 marginally keys
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Public key Infrastructure (PKI)
• set of roles and procedures:
- issue, maintain, administer, revoke, suspend, reinstate, and
renew digital certificates
- create and manage a public key repository
PKI:
• CA – stores, issues, signs certs
• RA – verifies identity
• Central directory– cert requests issued and revoked,
• Management system
• Cert policy
X.509 PKI certificate
• Certification Authority – trusted third party
• Certificate revocation lists (CRL) – certificates no
longer be trusted (compromised key, CA,…)
• RFC5280 – defines format and semantics of certs
and CRLs
• X.509 versions 1,2,3
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X.509 PKI certificate content
Serial Number: unique ID of cert
Subject: ID of entity
Signature algorithm:
Signature:
Issuer: verifier of info and issued cert
Valid–From: date cert is first valid from
Valid–To: expiry date
Key-Usage: purpose of PK (signature, cert signing, …)
Public Key:
Thumbprint algorithm: to compute hash of PK cert
Thumbprint (fingerprint): hash of abbreviated PK cert
Certificate issuing
Certificate verification
Checking single cert:
• current date against validity period
• current validity of CA public key
• signature of CA on cert
• check whether certificate is revoked
– CRL or OCSP
• policies
Certificates hierarchy
• root CA (trust anchor) - self-signed certificate
• Intermediate CA’s
• End entity – user certificate
Chain of trust
• Trust transfer – to lower CA’s
• Root cert, intermediate certs, end-user cert.
• Chain:
– end-user cert – signed by CA1
– CA1 cert – signed by CA2…
– root CA cert – signed by itself
Server – sends all certs up to root cert to browser
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Chain of trust
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Certificate path validation
Input: cert path, trust anchor
Path validation:
1. Check all certs if still valid
2. Check revocation status of certs
3. Check issuer = of previous cert subject
4. Check policy constraints
5. …
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Revocation
• Reasons for revocation
– key compromise (most common), CA compromise,
affiliation change,…
• Two states:
– revoked – irreversibly for compromised private key
– hold – unsure user about key compromising, can be
reinstalled
• Checked using:
– CRL – list of revoked certs
– Online Certificate Status Protocol – on demand
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CRL
Issued by CA:
• Certificate Revocation List (CRL):
– list of revoked certificates of end-users
• Authority Revocation list
– List of revoked cert of CA’s
1. Issuer name
2. Date list created
3. Date next CRL scheduled
4. Entries = serial number + revocation date of cert
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CRL distribution problem
• Fixed validity of CRLs
– massive load when CRL expires
(e.g10M clients download a 1MB CRL issued once a minute
= ~150GB/s traffic)
Solutions:
delta CRL – updates only – newly revoked certs
Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP)
– status of cert -OK / revoked / unknown
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Time aspect
What if private key is compromised?
How to prove signature was created using secure
private key?
• Time - critical parameter!!!!
• Time stamping authority – sign time stamp
• Time stamp – Sig(H(H(data) | time)
– is stored by requester with data
• Standards - RFC 3161, X9.95, ISO 18014